Iran Contra: Episode 2 - Trade Secrets

Pushkin. Hey Leon here, Before we get to this episode, I want to let you know that you can binge the entire season of Fiasco Iran Contra right now, add free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber. Sign up for Pushkin Plus on the Fiasco Apple podcast show page, or visit Pushkin dot Fm slash Plus. Now onto the show.

Ronald Reagan makes his debut.

Today is America's leading map.

On the morning of January twentieth, nineteen eighty one, the White House was preparing for the arrival of a new president, but some unfinished business was threatening to overshadow the festivities.

I Reagan may be the first president the day's top news story on his inauguration day.

There's Angxiat that hangs over everything.

This whole business of the hostages.

This whole business of the hostages referred to more than fifty American citizens who were being held prisoner in Iran. They had been there for more than a year, locked inside the US Embassy in Tehran by a group of young radicals.

The US Embassy in Tehran has been invaded and occupied by Iranian students.

The American hostages were blindfolded, handcuffed, and marched out on the US Embassy's front steps by the revolutionary students. The Iranians had fought US Marine guards for three hours for control of the embassy.

The hostage crisis started in November of nineteen seventy nine. Iran had just undergone a revolution a few months earlier. The Shah, Iran's long serving US backed leader had been overthrown and exiled. Islamic fundamentalists who called America the Great Satan had taken power. American news networks reported that Iran's new Supreme Leader, the Ayatola Rujuola Komeni, had given the hostage takers his blessing.

The move has the Iola's personal support, which adds to Washington's difficulty in trying to resolve this dangerous situation.

President Jimmy Carter tried to pressure Iran into releasing the hostages. His administration cut diplomatic ties with the Komeni government, and they froze Iranian state assets in US banks. Carter even authorized the secret rescue mission, but it ended in disaster.

Thousands of jubile and Iranians gathered outside to celebrate the defeat and disgrace of America.

The United States tried to free the hostages and failed.

None of the hostages were released, and eight American servicemen were killed in a helicopter crash. The failed mission made Carter look hapless and ineffective, and the crisis continued. Americans turned on their televisions for nightly updates. Walter Cronkite began signing off at the end of every broadcast by noting the number of days the Americans had been held captive.

That's the word it is. Tuesday, February nineteenth, nineteen eighty undred and eighth day of captivity, two hundred and twenty second day of captivity, three hundred and seventy seventh day of captivity for American hostages.

Inter rat Carter's efforts to win the hostages release stretched into his re election campaign.

The Republicans are itching to turn the hostage crisis against the administration.

The administration has boxed it so bad that we're left with very few options.

The hostage issue hovered over the whole campaign, and it was something that just so damaged Carter.

That's journalist Jane Mayer, who covered the Reagan administration for The Wall Street Journal and co authored the book Landslide.

And the idea of Carter being weak was really the thing that was hammered over and over again and played a big part in why he lost.

Reagan's inauguration in nineteen eighty one marked the four hundred and forty fourth day of the hostage crisis. The outgoing Carter administration had hoped it would be the last.

This has been quite a suspense evening.

Jimmy Carter, his last night in the White House, spent it in the Oval Office working with his aids.

The day before, they had notified the press that a deal had been reached to finally free the Americans, but the hostages were still not home.

In the United States to be Carter.

At the inauguration ceremony, Carter walked to the dais where Reagan was about to be sworn in. Even then, reporters were yelling out to him for confirmation that the hostages were being released.

Whether you could hear or not.

The President at Carter, which just passed if the hostagers are out, and he responded saying not yet, not yet.

The Iranians were not going to release the hostages on Carter's watch. They waited until after Reagan was sworn in. Before allowing them to leave Tehran. As Carter traveled home to Georgia, Reagan got to announce the good news.

Some thirty minutes ago.

The planes bearing our prison left Iranian airspace and are now breathed.

But it had been a wrenching day for mister Carter, and aide said he had been terribly hurt and disappointed when he was not able to announce the release of the hostages before leaving alf Us this morning.

The simultaneous inauguration of Reagan and the hostages getting out enabled him to take full credit for it and sort of appear to be the savior.

A week later, Reagan welcomed the hostages home in a ceremony in the Rose.

Gardens at the White House, a welcome fit for a king, a kind of South Lawn ceremony usually reserved for visiting.

Heads of states.

Welcome home, you are home, and believe me, you are welcome.

But the triumphant moment also created a liability for the Reagan administration.

It so publicly associated them with this act that it upped the anti for Reagan. He was more vulnerable than maybe other presidents would have been to being manipulated on the issue because he'd made this sort of his selling point.

Later, one of Reagan's counter terrorism analysts expressed regret over the spectacle. Where did we first go wrong? Nineteen eighty one? He said, once we had the Rose Garden ceremony, we had attached huge political benefits to the return of US hostages. In other words, Reagan had set himself up for a potential hostage crisis of his own. I'm Leon Nevak from Prolog Projects and Pushkin Industries. This is fiasco iran contrast.

Seven Americans kidnapped over the past fifteen months, seven Americans who have disappeared.

The Reagan administration's response to the series of kidnappings has been one of almost total silence.

They did not want to have a hostage problem like Jimmy Carter has.

Maybe they can get the hostages out.

I can't assure you that no deal was made.

The impression left by all of this is that things are afoot.

The only person that could have stopped me, and I didn't do it.

Episode two, Trade Secrets how Ronald Reagan tried to avoid Jimmy Carter's fate by extending a hand to one of America's sworn enemies. We'll be right back. Among the advisors and aides who joined Ronald Reagan in the White House was a soft spoken and cerebral retired Marine named Robert Bud McFarlane. McFarlane's domain was foreign policy. As a student at the US Naval Academy, he had longed to have a hand in shaping America's relationship to the rest of the world.

And I had to think with all the rigor I could muster about the elements of power and their nature and their limits.

This is Bud McFarlane speaking to me in December of twe nineteen in Washington, DC.

All that is not unique to me.

I mean, hundreds thousands of people go through as good or better schools than I did and get this foundation knowledge and self confidence that, yes, you can contribute constructively because you know the rules and you occasionally have a lucid interval and even imagination that could make the world a better place.

Bud McFarland died in twenty twenty two at the age of eighty four. Perhaps more than anyone else in the Reagan White House, McFarlane felt personally responsible for the events that led to Iran Contra. When I first approached him about an interview. He made it clear that rehashing the story of the scandal would be painful.

Remorse doesn't quite capture it. I I'd failed my country.

McFarlane's career in government began during that Nickson administration, when he worked for Henry Kissinger.

Henry Kissinger has been on the road conferring, negotiating, and meeting with heads of state in eight countries in nine days.

McFarlane saw Kissinger as a professional role model, an ambitious geopolitical thinker who could see the vulnerabilities of America's adversaries and knew how to exploit them.

Kissinger carried out his Middle East peace mission today in three Arab countries.

He's the most gifted man to work in American foreign policy in any generation since World War Two.

Henry was someone who I had admired, notwithstanding his cynicism and occasionally ruthless methods, and being there even as a note taker was a.

Gift.

In nineteen eighty three, just days before the invasion of Grenada, Reagan made McFarlane his National Security Advisor, the same job Henry Kissinger had held a decade earlier.

Robert McFarlane, we'll be confirmed as National Security Advisor, but I want to thank you for accepting this new challenge. All of us look forward to working with you in the coming months.

From the beginning of his tenure as National Security Advisor, McFarlan had a special interest in Iran. He believed that even though Iran was led by the intensely anti American Iatola Komani, the US might have a chance to intervene in the country's politics.

Conscious of iran strategic and economic importance, the administration wants to keep the door open to possible reconciliation. But while Comte lives, that seems a distant hope.

I really didn't imagine that we had a plausible prospect of being able to engage with this government. I did think, however, that there were reasons why the circumstances facing Iran might give us an opportunity to influence the regime change.

McFarlane had this theory that there might be people inside the Iranian military who would be amenable to the idea of a coup against Komani. Theoretically, the Americans could help these dissident elements and in the process turn Iran from an enemy into an ally. The way they had been before the revolution.

I mean, you'd have to have the very senior leadership of the military who had become demoralized. And that's theory, but it was a very plausible possibility that the military would be the instrument of changing the regime in a relatively bloodless coup.

MacFarlane had a specific reason for thinking that Iran was vulnerable to an internal coup. As he saw it, the country was stuck between two foreign powers, Iraq to the west and the Soviet Union to the northeast. In Iraq, the problem was Saddam Hussein, who had invaded Iran in nineteen eighty right after the Iranian Revolution. The war that followed was unimaginably violent. Hundreds of thousands of people were being killed.

A war that started months ago with fretful skirm issues, a war that no one now seems able to stop.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was just sort of looming over Iran.

On its northern border.

Iran worries about twenty four Soviet divisions.

The two countries shared a border, and MacFarland had no doubt that the Soviets, who had recently invaded Afghanistan, wanted to gain influence in the Middle East. He thought maybe there were people within the Iranian leadership who were concerned about the same thing.

Out of self interest. That ought to have nurtured a dissonant element.

There was just one problem. McFarlane didn't actually know for sure that these dissidents existed. He was thinking strategically, just like Kissinger had taught him, and he was hoping to be fair. There wasn't much else he could do. Concrete intelligence about what was happening in the Iranian government was very hard to come by. The relationship between Iran and the US was openly hostile.

Leading officials of the Reagan administration repeatedly have accused Iran of sponsoring terrorist attacks against the United States.

In nineteen eighty four, the Reagan administration officially designated the Komani regime a state sponsor of terrorism. They enforced an arms embargo that prevented the US government from selling weapons to Iran, and launched a diplomatic campaign to pressure other countries to do the same.

The burning of the American flag, the shouts of Death to America.

Friday prayers, Iranian imams led chance of death to America. So it was Chile between the Reagan White House and the Komani regime. But then in July of nineteen eighty five, Bud McFarlane received a visit from a trusted associate bearing good news. It turned out that the people mc farland had been imagining the dissidents within the Iranian regime were in fact real and they wanted to talk. Around the same time, a related crisis was unfolding in the Middle East.

The American University of Beirut today is under heavier guard than usual. The US Embassy there, citing intelligence reports, has warned that pro Iranian extremists are planning mass kidnappings of Americans on the campus.

John Weir was in his twenties when his father was taken hostage in Lebanon.

I remember talking to my sisters and my sisters being upset, my mom being very upset.

It was six months into Bud McFarland's tenure as National Security Advisor, and about three years since the American hostages taken in Tehran were returned home. John Weir's father, the Reverend Benjamin Weir, was a Presbyterian minister who had been assigned to Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon. Weir was kidnapped as he and his wife Carol were leaving them apartment.

And not too far from the anxious department building, a car pulled up, some guys got out and grabbed my dad. My mom tried to fight them off, She's not much of a fighter, and they basically just muzzled him into the car and drove off.

In the nineteen eighties, Lebanon was embroiled in a brutal sectarian civil war, and Islamic militia groups began kidnapping European and American citizens. The group that captured Benjamin Weir was associated with Hesbela, which enjoyed the support of the Komani regime in Iran. By nineteen eighty five, Weir was one of seven Americans being held hostage in Lebanon.

Seven Americans kidnapped in Beirut over the past fifteen months, seven Americans who have disappeared.

In addition to Weir, the group of hostages included a Catholic priest, a correspondent for the Associated Press, and three employees of the American University in Beirut. In the federal government, administration officials were most co earned, with one hostage in particular, a CIA operative named William Buckley.

William Buckley, a political officer at the US Embassy in Beirut, was kidnapped.

He was kidnapped on March the sixteenth, nineteen eighty four.

Buckley had been with the CIA for decades, working in Zayir, Cambodia, Egypt, and Pakistan. When he was kidnapped, Buckley was the head of the CIA's be Route Division, though that was not public information at the time. News outlets identified him only as a political officer at the US Embassy. In January of nineteen eighty five, Buckley's captors released a videotape of him to prove that he was still alive.

January nineteen, page five Hi as well.

In the video, Buckley appeared weak and his voice sounded thin. Intelligence officials feared that the kidnappers were torturing him in order to get CIA's secrets. As Buckley's captivity stretched into its second year, it weighed on the minds of administration officials like McFarlane, CIA Director William Casey and President Reagan himself, But the administration seemed to be avoiding drawing attention to the hostage situation as much as possible.

The Reagan administration's response to the series of kidnappings has been one of almost total silence. What a complete contrast to the actions of the Carter administration when Iranian extremists seized the American embassy in Tehran more than five years ago.

Here again is John Weir.

The Reagan White House had made a lot of political hay out of Jimmy Carter's issues with the hostages in Iran, and it was pretty clear to us that they were kind of suppressing as much as they could discussion of hostages or use of the word hostages, and they did not want to have a hostage problem like Jimmy Carter had.

The administration had also publicly committed itself to an ironclad principle America does not negotiate with terrorists.

Terrorists and those who support them must and will be held to account.

The principle was that, you know, we should never deal with terrorists.

Here's Jane Mayer again, that you.

Do not honor them by dealing with them, and they took a very hard line on it.

The Reagan administration communicated a consistent message to the Weir family, just laylo, the government is doing everything it can. They even had a phrase for it, quiet diplomacy.

Quiet diplomacy was their explanation of why we had no idea what they were doing. We would say, so, what are you doing, Oh, well, we're using quiet diplomacy.

Eventually, Benjamin Weir's wife, Carol took matters into her own hands. She had lived in Lebanon for more than thirty years and she knew a lot of people. She began traveling around the region talking to religious leaders, following leads of her own, and comparing notes with her contacts at the US embassy.

She would ask them, you know, who have you seen? And there were a couple of occasions when they mentioned some people and she said, well, I've already seen that person. So, you know, she started trying to figure out who had them, what was going on, what did they want. But after we'd heard quiet diplomacy long enough, we decided that the quiet diplomacy was just a way of trying to pacify us, and that we needed to ratchet things up.

Finally, Carol Weir decided that she needed to relocate to the United States and take her message to Washington.

The wife of the Reverend Benjamin Weir was in Washington today seeking more help for her husband.

It's four hundred and seventeen days now for me since my husband was kidnapped. As that's a long time, and I believe they have been forgotten.

The Weirs used the resources of the Presbyterian Church to launch a public pressure campaign. They spoke at churches and gave press conferences. They organized an effort to get a milli letters written to the administration. In one speech, Carol Weir invoked the Iranian hostage crisis that had consumed the nation's attention just a few years earlier. She asked if she would have to wait four hundred and forty four

The old aides who knew him well, tried to keep people with hard luck stories away from him. That is the truth about Reagan was that whenever there was somebody who was an individual with a problem that was near him, he had a tendency to be empathetic and he could be manipulated.

Reagan's minders had feared that if he met with the hostage families, he would begin pushing to get their loved ones released at any cost, and he might be tempted to violate his policy of never negotiating with terrorists. But by the summer of nineteen eighty five, many of Reagan's first term aids were no longer around. Without them there to hold him back, the President began to fixate on the hostages, asking about them in meetings nearly every day and agonizing over their continued captivity.

He basically got drawn in and hooked and became emotionally involved in the situation, and he made clear that he cared and he really wanted these hostages out and something done about it. And his motto, which he often said to his aides, was don't bring me problems, bring me solutions.

In July of nineteen eighty five, National security advisor Bud McFarlane approached the President with a possible solution. In his diary, Reagan wrote, some strange soundings are coming from the Iranians. Bud em will be here tomorrow to talk about it. It could be a breakthrough on getting our seven kidnap victims back. McFarland's meeting with Reagan was prompted by a conversation he had had two weeks earlier with a senior

It was simply stated that there are elements in the Iranian army that are prepared to open a dialogue with us that might lead to oh regime change, but that it would take probably years of nurture to do it. I was simply heartened, however, by the fact that he thought it might be nurtured and developed over time.

It was exactly what MacFarlane had hoped for, Iranian moderates and positions of power who secretly opposed the revolutionary government that had taken over their country. There was a catch. The coup was not going to nurture itself before there could be any dialogue between the US and these Iranian moderates. The Americans would have to do Their new friends a good turn, they would have to sell them some weapons. Specifically, the Iranians wanted anti tank missiles for use in their

Kim k presented it as their being able to achieve the release of the hostages, and that wasn't just his notion, but that it had been vetted by Iranians that he believed were worthy people.

How did David Kimki know they were worthy people? The answer lay with the man who was helping Israel make contact with the Iranian moderates. His name was Menu chair Goorbanifar Orbanifar was an Iranian businessman living in Europe. He was a kind of international fixer, a guy who helped broker deals between parties who would otherwise have no reason

I thought it was fraud.

After all, unless you have absolute conviction in the integrity of the people you're dealing with, a barter for hostages is just an open door to encouraging more hostages being taken.

Nonetheless, McFarland decided the opportunity was worth bringing to President Reagan. The risk was obvious, but so was the potential for a historic world changing moment. Remember McFarland's role model was Henry Kissinger, whose crowning achievement under Nixon was making a surprise opening to communist China. Here again is Jane Mayer.

He just so wanted to be a major global player. He wanted to be like Henry Kissinger. He wanted to be a huge state craft warrior who was going to change the world. And this looked like something where he could, you know, put his mark on the world and have a legacy here.

Two weeks after McFarland's meeting with David Kimkey, Ronald Reagan was in the hospital recovering from surgery that removed a cancerous growth from his intestine. McFarland came to Reagan's bedside to brief him on the potential opening to Iran. McFarland says he mapped out the benefits, but was very clear on the downsides.

They said, this is a very high risk venture for you. I briefed him on the prospect that this could go wrong.

McFarland told me that Reagan was enthusiastic about the idea as soon as he understood that it might bring home the hostages.

He focused upon what Kimky had said that his intermediary, Go Bonifar, believes that the army officers involved could affect the release of the hostages. Well, Reagan said, well, but we can't let an opportunity of that. Lord, it's risky go buy. Let's test it first and see to what extent there is good faith here or not.

McFarland worked out a plan with Kimki and other Israeli officials in order to avoid the appearance of a direct weapons sale from the United States to Iran, the White House would use Israel as a go between. Essentially, Israel would sell some of their American made missiles to the Iranian moderates, and the US would then replenish Israel's stocks. Several top officials in the administration, notably the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, thought the arms for

As he saw it, whatever cancer had been in his body had been taken out, and it was never he who had had it. It was just the tumor that had it, so he could say that, actually, he never had cancer.

Reagan was so focused on the hostages that he waved away the arguments as cabinet officers tried to make against the Iran plan.

He just didn't want to deal with it. He was an optimist. Oh, he was a near sighted humanitarian.

If you will, but.

Without thinking seriously about the downside risks here.

According to McFarlane, Reagan called him in early August to personally authorize the shipment of anti tank missiles to Iran.

I reminded him again that look, this may not work, and he said, well, Bud, we don't know until we try.

By the summer of nineteen eighty five, the Weird family felt like they were finallying traction with the Reagan administration. According to John Weir, the breakthrough came after the family scored a meeting with a prominent politician who had some experience dealing with a hostage crisis, Jimmy Carter.

We flew to the airport in Atlanta, and Jimmy Carter met us in a lounge at the airport. There was no one else present other than his security detail.

The Weirs asked Carter for advice.

And said, you know, we've been very frustrated with the current administration. We don't feel like we're making any progress. You know, what do you think? What can you tell us?

Weir says that Carter initially hesitated, saying the family couldn't possibly want his advice, but the Weirs kept pushing and finally Carter gave them a name.

Jimmy Carter said, you know, Bud McFarlane works in the current administration and the National Security Council, and I will contact Bud and ask him if he will meet with you. And Jimmy Carter stepped out of the room and he came back a few minutes later and he said, Bud McFarlane has agreed to meet with you. Basically, that was the end of the meeting.

John Weir says that his family felt a sense of momentum once they were introduced to Bud McFarlane. McFarland seemed engaged, sympathetic, and solutions oriented. He also gave the family another contact in the White House.

This guy over here, Attenant, Colonel Oliver North, and he will be your contact person. And if you have any questions or any issues, Colonel North will make himself available to you and you contact him and you talk to him and he'll bring you up to speed on anything that's going on.

McFarlane had taken Oliver North under his wing at the National Security Council. They were both graduates of the Naval Academy who had served in Vietnam, and though they had very different personalities, they were fond of each other. Accounts differ on when exactly North was brought into the Iran initiative, but starting in the sun of nineteen eighty five, he began interfacing with hostage families like the Weirs.

Colonel North would provide information from time to time about trips he was taking. He wouldn't give any details, but he would say, well, you know, I flew and inn F fourteen to go to Europe for a quick meeting that was really important. Would kind of talk about how tough his life was, which is kind of funny. You know, how hard he worked and all the hours he put in, and how he had to take off on short notice

McFarlane and North met with several hostage families throughout the summer and offered similar assurances.

The families of the American hostages said that in an hour with National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane they had learned a lot more about what the Reagan administration has been doing and they had.

Known in the past.

John Weir said that despite the overtures, his mother, Carol was skeptical. After spending decades living in Lebanon, she had deep reservations about US foreign policy in the Middle East. Earlier that year, she had met with Secretary of State George Schultz, but the Schultz's surprise and frustration, she used the time to lay out the grievances of her husband's captors, telling Schultz that US policy in the Middle East was

My mother did not trust Bud MacFarlane or Colonel North or George Schultz at all. She didn't believe anything they told her, and she didn't really trust the information that they gave her.

You know.

She didn't want to be uncooperative or ungrateful, but she didn't really believe that they were being productive or being honest.

On August twentieth, nineteen eighty five, the first arms for hostages trade between the US and Iran began. That evening, ninety six anti tank missiles were loaded onto a plane at Bengurian Airport in Tel Aviv. The operation was carried out in complete secrecy. Only a handful of people knew it was happening. According to Plan, the missiles were Israeli owned and made in California. The cargo also included the man responsible for putting the deal together, Manu Chair Gorbanifhar,

The kind of things that are obviouscations that tell you either they're not competent to do this or that there's malfeasance and you're being screwed here. And I said, look, this is really unimpressive on their part and foolish on ours. If we can't get this straightened.

Out, Reagan agreed to the terms of the new proposal. A second Israeli shipment, this time carrying more than four hundred missiles was sent to Iran. Meanwhile, MacFarland had received a call from one of the many intermediaries he had been dealing with and was told that he would have to pick which hostage to release. As McFarland later described it, he was being asked to play god. Despite the pressure, MacFarland felt the choice was obvious. Administration officials have been

And clearly that's the one I favored, just out of professional anguish.

But the kidnappers did not release The CIA station chief Gorbanifar relayed that Buckley was too sick to be transferred. This was a disturbing news. Either Buckley's condition was worsening or the kidnappers thought they could get more weapons for him later. Instead, the Americans were getting someone else. We'll be right back. On September fifteenth, nearly five hundred days after the Reverend Benjamin Weir was kidnapped, his family got a call from the Reage administration.

Somewhat unexpectedly, we were told that my dad had been released. At that particular moment, we weren't really expecting that news. We'd had no premonition that that was going to happen in any way. But we're also told, you know, you really need to keep this quiet. We don't want anybody to know. We think other people may be released, and any type of public disclosure of this information right now could put the release of the other people at risk.

The family traveled to a hotel in Virginia to gather with officials from the federal government.

And then all of a sudden, there was a knock on the door and there was my dad. Quite a shock.

Five days later, President Reagan announced that Weir had come home.

I'm pleased to inform you if at Reverend Benjamin Weir has now been released.

Neither Weir, nor his family, nor anyone else outside of Reagan's inner circle knew that Weir had been set free as part of an arms for hostages deal, and so the administration had to walk a very fine line between celebrating Weir's release and keeping its distance. In the briefing room, the official explanation was that foreign humanitarians had helped secure Weir's freedom.

I can assure you that no deal was made and that our position on no concessions two terrorists has not changed.

The President and other officials hinted strongly that US efforts had obtained Reverend Ware's release, but they wrapped that claim in a mystery of no comments. The impression left by all of this is that things are afoot, that Reverend Ware's release was no fluke, but the product of an intense administration effort that could still result in the freeing of the other six.

As far as William Buckley was concerned, he would never be released. He had died before the first weapons shipment ever touched down in Tehran. In the weeks after a Weir's release, the big question for the Reagan administration was what to do next. Six hostages remained in Beirut and Manuchaer Gorbanifharr was saying that the Iranians wanted more weapons. All of that meant that an opening to Iran and potentially a path to regime change were still on the table.

Well, the more I heard about Gorboni Fahar, the lower my confidence that this had any plausibility.

McFarland was right to be skeptical. As it turned out, the August arms deal wasn't the first time Gorbanifar had approached the US government to offer help in releasing the hostages. Here's Jane Mayer again.

He had already twice taken polygraphs at the CIA and flunked them both in earlier episodes when he went to the CIA and claimed that he knew who had kidnapped Buckley, at which point the CIA labeled him a fabricator and put out a burn notice, meaning don't deal with this guy.

By the fall of nineteen eighty five, McFarland was exhausted and he was ready to retire from government. In late November, he told Reagan that he wanted to leave the administration. He tried to resign once before, a year earlier, but Reagan had convinced him to stay, telling him he considered

I didn't think it was working. I think, at best, if there are any pragmatists in Iran, we're not in touch with them. And the stakes here in terms of the failure of the mission, but more importantly, the embarrassment, even if it had succeeded and were disclosed, was just too great. And wanted to leave government and did not want to leave a ticking bomb Bill.

McFarlane was getting ready to leave the White House, Reagan asked him to fly to London and discussed the arrangement with Gorbonifhar in person. McFarlane was on a flight to London that very night. Oliver North was already there, and on Sunday, December eighth, the two of them met Gorbanifar in a West End apartment belonging to an Israeli armsdeer. The meeting did not go well.

It started off mildly enough, but I explained that the President had heard my recommendation that it be discontinued because there was simply was amounting evidence of bad faith on the Iranian side. I said, this is a pointless, open ended, bad idea, and my country, my president is unwilling to accept the risks, and I'm here to convey his decision that this simply will not go on. It's terminated. Immediately. Gorbani far flared stormed around, said, you're foolish, you're crazy,

And I said, I don't believe you, and we left.

When McFarlane returned to Washington, he reported that Gorbanifharr was a borderline moron and called him the most despicable character he had ever met. But as he prepared to clear out his office, McFarlane says he feared that, despite his best efforts, the Arms for Hostages program was not truly dead. The President was simply too invested in bringing the hostages home.

I knew that his preoccupation was the safety of the hostages would lead him to start this process up again, and it was with doubt, in fact high prospect of it being renewed that. I nonetheless tabled my resignation and left. And I shouldn't have done it. I consider that I had failed our country and retiring at that point. The only person that could have stopped it was me, and I didn't do it.

Look, Farland knew that Reagan trusted him. If he had stayed by the President's side, maybe he would have succeeded at extinguishing the Iran initiative for good.

The President came to office, I think to be a domestic president, and he never made any pretense at being a man of great depth on foreign affairs. And for him to say at the end in tears, but I never had anybody I could count on as indispensable.

But you are that guy. Well I was, But.

From my first time at the Naval Academy. I mean, it's in your bones. You know what your job is, serve the country, and don't blame somebody else. Don't make up pretense, don't figure out some excuse circumstances. It's kind of blarny. I mean, step up. Now, you can solve your soul by saying, well, the President asked me to do it. But if you know, as I knew that this was not going to work. I don't think there's any way of salvaging that's that's something that gets sorted

And so.

Sure, if I had to do again, I would not have let it go on. But I did, and there's no changing the facts.

The changing of the guard today and a top White House foreign policy job, national Security Advisor, Robert McFarland, resigned and he was replaced by his deputy.

Farland was a Kissinger proteget.

He was appointed National Security Advisor as a quiet team player.

After McFarland's departure from the White House, talks between Oliver North and Minuchair Gribonifar did indeed resume, and two months later more American missiles were on their way to Iran. On the next episode of Fiasco, the Reagan Administration's War on Communism arrives secretly in Nicaragua.

I was confronted with questions which began more or less as follows, mister ambassador, the CIA has blown up the bridges connecting Nicaragua and Honduras. What do you think about this? Start to your investorship.

For a list of books, articles, and documentary we used in our research, follow the link in the show notes. Fiasco is a production of Prologue Projects and it's distributed by Pushkin Industries. The show is produced by Andrew Parsons, Madeline kaplan Ula Kulpa and me Leon Mayfock. Our editor was Camilla Hammer. Our researcher was Francis Carr. Additional archival research from Caitlin Nicholas. Our music is by Nick Silvester.